A Big Little Week

While true, that heading may seem bizarre, but I'll delay the explanation until I've shared something of the holiday with my readers.  Though some might say it's tame, or unadventurous, a week in Weston-Super-Mare was rewarding and relaxing.  It was rewarding in that I got to drive a great virtually new car - a VW Jetta with less than 8,000 miles on the clock.  It was rewarding in that my 'sister-cousin'* and I shared a holiday experience for the first time in nearly 50 years!  And it was rewarding to make the acquaintance of some new and interesting people.



SS Peter & Paul, Bleadon,
where I rang on Tuesday evening

Weston-Super-Mare esplanade

We met the two brothers who run the hotel where we stayed.  One had been ill, and they had had to cancel some bookings to cut down the workload; he explained to me the additional pressure that this placed upon him by way of reduced income, and the constant reminder of it in the empty bedrooms around them. 
We met a timid and reluctant school-leaver recruited at short notice to help out, and we met a guest whose holiday had been extended through ill fortune, in that his wife had suffered a stroke there during the previous week, and was being cared for in a local hospital.  When the young girl couldn't make it one morning, he served breakfast to us all in the most genial manner - and we all agreed that, in more comfortable circumstances, he'd make an excellent guest-house host.

two colourful inmates of
Brean Tropical Bird Sanctuary

Believe it or not, this is the first chance I've had since unloading my camera last weekend to examine these pictures.  It has been a really  busy week, although I'm hard pressed to quote chapter and verse of precisely why.  Workwise, I've recorded the lowest 'miles-per-job' statistic since November.  In a week in which I've done 19 jobs - another remarkable number, unparalleled since before last April - the furthest I've been is Sleaford, with only two other jobs exceeding 100 miles.  In keeping with its strange outcome, the week began with probably one of the most unusual jobs I've had. 

I spent almost an hour waiting in relative silence while three feet away sat a woman frantically wishing a computer would work a bit faster.  I had come on behalf of her former employer to collect the company laptop following her redundancy at the weekend, and she was anxious to transfer from it all her personal files.  She'd underestimated how long this would take, however, and when my knock sounded on the door she was far from ready for my arrival.  My day then took a busy turn, taking a box of mobile phones to a distribution centre on the A1 near Newark, and some documents to the council offices in Sleaford.

I won't bore readers with the other 16 jobs in detail, simply mentioning that Thursday was special in that it included visits to no less than four hospitals, and to describe the 'repeating genie' performance of the week.  On Wednesday afternoon, I was sent on a routine journey from Sandy to Haverhill, one done many times before.  This time, however, it was coupled with the delivery of a couple of cans of paint from a company near Royston to the fenlands of west Norfolk.  I had been given precise delivery instructions.  SatNav would guide me to the drive of a big house; I should ignore this, and head for the green building clearly visible behind it.  Unfortunately, the post code on the delivery paperwork was in error: 0BU should have read 0BE.  As a result I was directed not only to the wrong farm, but in the wrong village.  Intuition, reprogramming SatNav to look for the village by name, and a phone call to the sender for more precise directions, all yielded nothing.  By then it was gone 6.0pm, and I reckoned - correctly - that the man would be at home: the invoice address on the documentation.  Within minutes I had turned into his driveway and, smiling and bemoaning his supplier's inefficiency, he welcomed delivery of the paint.

When I thought the week had staggered to a conclusion at teatime on Friday, I had a call to deliver some wine and soft drinks to a pub near Wisbech.  As I found my turning from the A10, I thought the road looked familiar: it was the same road I'd taken two days before as my misguided SatNav led me to Nordelph.  This time it stopped me at the right place, the Lamb and Flag at Welney.  The delivery rounded off the week in excellent manner for, once the van was empty and parked up, I re-entered the pub for what has to be the tastiest meal I've enjoyed this year!

* - a genealogical contradiction but, we agree, justifiably descriptive.

Damp Squib Goes Mad

I've lost count of the times when I've complained about the week starting badly but ending well, and this has been yet another one.  I do wonder what it is about Mondays and/or Tuesdays that make them slack; perhaps everyone got things done last week and now they've got to build up again ... was that a pig I saw up there?  Back to earth ...

Monday offered me only one job, taking a box of machined parts from Hatfield to Papworth, which enabled me to join in a mirth-filled bell-ringing practice in the evening.  I'm not sure why this was so, apart from two colleagues who are now on the brink of recovery from illness, but we were all in joyful mood, and the chatter just flowed.  Tuesday gave me a 'there and back' double to south Essex, taking some paint to Horndon-on-the-Hill, and then making a collection from a doctor in Woodham Mortimer for a laboratory in Royston.  With little more on the clock by Tuesday evening than the target for one day, I was hoping for an improvement as Wednesday dawned.

The pattern of 'in and out' continued for two days.  Fairly early on Wednesday, I was sent to Rolls Royce in Derby with some parts from a local firm, and had got about half-way back when the phone went.  "Where are you?"  "Just coming down the M1 to junction 18 ..."  "Can you get off?"  After a quick check that it was safe, I was able to rumble over the hatched area at the top of the slip lane; I pulled onto the hard shoulder at the foot, continuing the conversation, "Yes, where did you want me to go?"  I was given an address in Manchester, asked to make a collection there and then deliver it the following morning to Broxbourne, just beside the M25.  It was then about 12.30, and as I quickly estimated travelling times, I cancelled any thought of attending a prayer meeting at the church that evening.  Instead, I found myself tucking into liver and onions at the Rugby truck-stop.

I made my delivery on Thursday morning, enjoyed the almost mandatory egg-and-bacon roll and refuelled the van, and then called in to see what might be next.  I didn't have long to wait before I was asked to collect from a factory almost opposite my lounge window - that's the advantage of working from home - to go to Benfleet.  Almost home from there, came another 'turn you round' call and I was sent to a large manufacturing establishment in Hertford, for a repeat of a job that I'd done three weeks ago.  It was a true repeat, right down to the need to wait half an hour for them to finish the job and prepare it for despatch!  At 4.45 I set off for Wolverhampton, thinking that I would be in time for the second night in a row to dine at Rugby - roast chicken this time.

After two quite full days, I was content that things were fairly slack and local yesterday.  In the morning I took some equipment to the West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, and also a parcel to one of the many freight forwarding companies that surround Heathrow, and in the afternoon came another hospital visit, this time to the Queen Elizabeth II in Welwyn Garden City.  On the way back I was offered another, similar trip too, to finish the week as it had begun in Papworth, but I declined this one, having quite a lot to do on the home front. 

And now, things seem to be nicely squared off, firstly to celebrate Fathers' Day with the men's group from the church, who have been practicing a musical presentation for tomorrow's service, and then to go into packing-and-preparing mode in readiness for the annual seaside holiday that begins on Monday.  I wonder what I shall manage to leave behind this year?

One Darned Setback after Another!

I heard an interesting comment on the radio the other day about cinema trailers.  It seems that the modern trend is to include all the most gripping scenes from the film in the trailer, and there is almost as much hype and excitement at the release of the trailer as there is for the film itself.  How different from my young days, when the trailer gave just an idea of the contents, and you just had to watch the film itself to see how it all worked out.

That was rather the pattern for this week - the best job was the first one, and it went sort of downhill from there.  This consisted of taking a mould tool to a factory in Sheffield, waiting for a while, and then bringing back some samples of what it had produced in operation.  By the time I left, not much of Monday remained after the job was completed.

Tuesday's sole job was to a local hospital, and was but the first of a number this week that have included some significant unforeseen delay.  Usually when I've served this combination of customer and hospital, I've delivered to the theatre which, though not well-marked, is easily accessible from the outside.  I had a number of fairly small but weighty items, and I had delivered about two thirds of them - necessitating several trips from the van to the hallway, waiting to obtain access to the theatre area, taking them to the delivery point and returning to the van.  My contact then had a phone call explaining that this particular consignment was required in another department; their supplier (our customer) had been told this: why was I taking them into the theatre?  Answer, the message hadn't got as far as me (not an unknown situation by far!)  The upshot was that I was shown the shortest way from where I was to the required department (and learned that to deliver there would have been easier than to the theatre in the first place.)  I then made several more trips to redeliver the items I'd already taken into the theatre, and to deliver the remainder.  I was glad in some ways to spend the rest of the day at my desk, 'recovering.'

Wednesday morning saw me given a straightforward job for Camberley.  However, by the time I'd ground to a halt on the M25 it was fairly clear that there was a major hold-up several miles in front of me, and quite a while before I would reach the next junction to take a diversion.  When I did so, I had to go several miles out of my way to get to my destination.  The return journey was trouble-free, but the southbound side of the M25 was still clogged - even if there didn't seem to be an obvious reason. 

In the evening I took a small parcel of point-of-sale materials to a shop being refurbished in the middle of Crewe.  There should have been a phone no. for me to call on arrival in order to make the delivery, but this wasn't to hand when I picked up the goods.  I set off, expecting a text message en route with the necessary details.  I was well on my way when the call eventually arrived, and I had to remind the evening controller that, since I was driving, I would be unable to write the number down, so why hadn't he texted me as arranged?  When I arrived I found the shop just by the entrance to the shopping mall, and even at 8.0pm, there were staff present, cleaning and polishing.  I imagine the grand opening was imminent.  I had no need of that phone no. after all ... which was as well because the site manager, I was told, had left some hours ago.

On Thursday, I was sent to what I described as 'the fish capital of England,' much to the amusement of the young chap who opened the door at the pick-up.  The consignment was a large box of security equipment, to be taken to a Grimsby filling station in the process of refurbishment (it must be the season for this!)  This proved to be no problem, and no sooner had I reported to the site office and returned to the van, than there was an engineer at my side to relieve me of my charge, and I could return to the unfolding story of England's defeat of the New Zealanders in the opening match of  cricket's Champions' League.

Friday was a sequence of delays.  It began with an 8.0 pick-up from Cambridge.  I turned up a couple of minutes late, but the folks there were in some doubt as to what I was collecting.  A phone call to an absent colleague settled this problem, and I was soon on my way to Burton-upon-Trent.  All was well until I got partway along the A14, where I sat for something like half-an-hour.  Word came from others in the queue that four lorries had been involved in a collision two junctions ahead of us.  Eventually we moved, only to stop again a mile or so up the road.  This time, however, I was within spitting distance of a side turning (one of those minor junctions that prevents that road becoming a motorway), and I was able to escape through the villages, and join the road again beyond the problem.

Returning midway through the afternoon, I was asked to divert to do a favour for a customer before reporting to the office - to deliver a barbecue from their premises to a house in Hitchin.  The centre of Hitchin had been closed because a lorry had broken down.  I then went to a hospital to collect some medicines for a housebound patient in Letchworth - the staff on the ward were all over the place, and no one seemed sure just what I was collecting.  This was eventually resolved, and my reward was the fascination of using a secret code to obtain the door-key and let myself into the house to make the delivery, coupled with the lady's immense gratitude for my arrival.

Time was then getting on, and I was asked if I minded working on, since there were other jobs to be done.  Nothing vital this time - just a box of wine for a lady in an office in Wellingborough.  This was a strange job from the outset, because when I collected it, it was already past normal office closing time.  Little surprise, therefore, when I arrived to find the cleaners in residence, and the security official at reception, unable to accept deliveries.  I adopted a helpless, we're-in-this-together attitude and, after a few seconds silent stand-off, my sympathy with his situation of not being told that this was on its way won the day: he signed and I emerged, empty-handed and satisfied, to go and look for some tea.

Yesterday, with work finished for the week, was possibly the most exhausting day.  I drove up to Bury St Edmunds, where I spent the day at Suffolk Record Office, sorting out missing reference numbers for my almost-finished project on the Sturgeon families of Stanton.  By the time I'd driven home I wasn't really tired, but equally couldn't really focus my attention on anything serious.  Never mind, I told myself, my annual holiday is just around the corner.

More news of that when it does arrive!